Sometimes when "researching" at night with the TV, my ears will prick up at a sound. As often as not, if I recognize it, it comes from Heavyocity. Their libraries seem to find a place all over film and TV, and elements from their latest offering,DM?307, can be heard in theGodzillatrailer. If the big guy himself approves, you won't find me disagreeing. Like their other libraries,DM?307uses Native Instruments Kontakt. Kontakt has a great sounding engine, nicely forward to these ears, yet still handles the bass well, and Kontakt Player is free to download. It is no secret that a good room and high-end gear can add an analog fullness to the digital medium, whether full recordings or samples, andDM?307's session list is first class. Heavyocity sounds have both depth and dimensionality, yet can still cut to the fore of a song or sound design. Not only do the raw (and processed) samples sound professional, the virtual faceplates and ergonomics add a lot to the programming and playability of Kontakt. Kontakt may be the sample playback standard these days, but it's designed more for right-brained logic than left-brained intuitiveness.DM?307disguises the complexities going on under the hood, simplifying playback down to collections of kits and loops.
Both kits and loops use the same initial interface, which is beguilingly basic at first glance. The sample name and waveform are front and center, along with tune, pan, and level. To the left are the master effects for the instrument - delay, modulation, reverb, and distortion - each with four knobs for control of the most useful parameters. Very easy to navigate. To the right are envelopes for both the master as well as individual samples. The center section contains two further effects controls. Click on Twist, and a big knob replaces the waveform. I'm not sure what all the Twist effects consist of, but it seems to affect the higher frequencies more the farther you twist. There are (much) smaller knobs for tone and rate, so you can get all time-based with Twist. Plus, it glows with the beat, which is a cool-looking method of syncing up the rate. To the right, there's another big knob for Punish, a combo compressor/saturation effect. The performance bar at the bottom sets pitch bend and velocity, along with an Amp Sequencer and the Grid drum machine or Loop Mutator.
The Grid is for kits and opens a virtual beatbox which consists of old-style buttons for five instruments or banks. If you've used an old drum machine or a modern step sequencer, you'll be right at home. Set the rate and number of steps, and then click on a button to play the associated sample. Click on the Grid play button to play and stop all the banks at once, while each bank has its own play button for soloing. Simple enough, but if you click on any of the bank names, the bank view opens up, where a step-sequencer sets which of the twelve samples that make up a bank is played for that beat, as well as another step-sequencer for volume. There is also a Humanize and Swing feature for the bank. The Grid also has a chainer section, where any of eight patterns available for each Grid can be linked up in any order. Grid patterns can be loaded from a preset folder, and new ones saved to a user folder. You can also play the kit live, since the twelve samples of each bank are mapped across the keyboard, starting at C1. Lower notes than that start the entire pattern or mute banks, while F6 and above are used for Trigger FX and another Amp Sequencer. Both these last effects are tabs on the main page and add another layer of filters, EQ, and associated sequencers, envelopes, LFOs, and other animating features. So there's a panoply of grooves on beats and within beats for each of the 80 kits inDM?307, all easily accessible and editable.
Loops share the main interface controls and come in two flavors. At the lowest level is a single loop spread across the keyboard so you can play slices like a REX file. It includes a handy MIDI to Host feature to drag the sample mapping to your host DAW for MIDI editing. At the next level, loop menus have entire loops arranged across the keyboard, and you can play them live against and over one another, or use your DAW to trigger and extend them. Once again,DM?307has a myriad of built-in step sequencers in Loop Mutator for the loops and components, as well as the Trigger FX and Amp Sequencer. I can't say enough about the quality of the loops - and not just the recording but the programming. While the sounds themselves are beautiful (though that beauty may be in the eye of a 600 ft lizard), the loop programming provides big, cinematic sound with some gorgeous space between hits. Also, Heavyocity has licensed some excellent impulses for Kontakt's convolution reverb.
With 1200 loops and 2000 samples available, and so many easy ways to alter the sound and the feel, the number of projects you can wring out ofDM?307is only limited by how hard you can squeeze. Instruments and multis are divided into various subfolders like industrial, scoring, dubstep, electronic, and hip hop, but there are some slamming rock multis and nice Latin/ethnic beats. It is not the first place I'd go for a jazz quartet or church band, but that is not whatDM?307is about. It is less for "traditional" styles and more for big, Tokyo-stomping beats.
($299 direct; www.heavyocity.com)
